One can see that women represent a high percentage of agricultural work in these African countries, whose production is already being destabilized by climate change. Indeed, it is these poor women in this particular part of the world that will shoulder the burden of the impact of climate change, as illustrated by this other graph from the report:

The top map illustrates the major contributors to climate change (basically the Northern hemisphere) while the bottom map represents the areas most affected by it (mostly, the entire African continent and past of South Asia). In other words, the population most responsible for the global climate change will be the least affected by its effects whereas the population least responsible for global climate change will be the ones most affected by it, on top of already being the poorest ones to start with.

This might partially explain why the biggest culprits are dragging their feet when it comes to seriously committing to reducing emissions and other measures to reduce the causes of global climate change.

As I said, nothing we have not heard before. And yet again, it is up to the women and girls of the Global South to get themselves educated so that they can solve problems they did not cause in the first place.

Every once in a while, it would be nice to read / hear that countries should invest in the education and reproductive health of women and girls, just because it would benefit them, and not for some greater social good or because we need them to pitch in to solve someone else’s problem.

A small step, of course, would be to have more women in delegations, or as heads of delegation, discussing these issues at the global level, such as the Copenhagen Summit, no?